Talib Kweli Quotes

I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.

Music was more than just something I enjoyed listening to. I was fascinated by it. I'd watch some of my favourite artists and emulate everything they did.

I used to re-create the beats that I heard.

When you draw, you copy the world don't you? You remake it on paper, but it isn't the same. It's yours. No one else could have created it just like that. When I make poems, I use the words we all use, but the order and the sound create a new power. This wood is someone's creation. We stumble through it's tendrils, as if we're crawling through the synapses of his mind.

Everything in life influences my music. I've always used songwriting as a means to share what I think is profound.

The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

I didn't really start writing music or lyrics or turning them into songs until I went to San Francisco.

Remixes come very quickly, because you already have the melody and the vocals. I have a great passion for music, so it doesn't matter to me if it's a remix or an original production. I don't think about it as, 'Well, I have to spend three hours on a remix or I have to do something all original.'

I wanted to give people a taste of my own music through the sound and style of my covers.

For me, everything definitely comes from music.

I've done a lot of albums and I kinda know when I'm onto something that was inspirational for me to record and create, and this was one of those projects where I really enjoyed making the album.

When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.

I've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.

Here's the thing... when people start making music, they start borrowing styles from other people, because that's what you do. You start by recreating hip-hop beats you've heard from other people, or you start mimicking other people, or you're just listening to stuff.

My books are personal: I'm not saying they're the Bible of music.

I can only speak for myself - there were times when I just wasn't inspired by creating music.

I listen a lot to rap, and I'm inspired to take it, to use it in another way, to get the message across.

I think it's being innovative and very creative to stay away from flat-out sampling somebody else's record. To me, that doesn't show too much of your creative side unless you take a little piece and add it, almost like spice on a chicken.

When I sample something, it's just me drawing from what I'm actually into. It's whatever sounds like a good track.

Beats are really inspiring. They always make me want to write something over them.

I'm not just a remix guy.

We listened to 'Beverly Hills.' I wanted to maybe even do a real 'Africa'-type version of that, I was thinking about for a minute.

Around the time that I was in high school, a lot of rappers were coming out with mixtapes of them rapping over other people's instrumentals, specifically Young Money.

Sometimes you're inspired by an old-school song that you want to chop up and make a sample out of it. I find that with a lot of older Motown music.